By Robert Romano

As the nation patiently awaits the Justice Department Inspector General report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court abuses that occurred in 2016 when President Donald Trump and his campaign were falsely accused of being Russian agents by the Obama administration’s intelligence agencies and Justice Department, the American people now know that at least some of those abuses continued well after Obama left office through 2018, according to now-declassified court documents.

Per Judge James Boasberg’s opinion, “the Court finds that the FBI's querying procedures do not comply with the requirement at Section 702(f)(1)(B) to keep records of U.S.-person query terms used to conduct queries of information acquired under Section 702.”

And, “The Court next examines the prevalence of non-compliant queries conducted by FBI personnel to return information about U.S. persons from Section 702-acquired data. It ultimately finds the FBI's querying and minimization procedures, as implemented, to be inconsistent with statutory minimization requirements and the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.”

Meaning, during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the false conspiracy theory that Trump was a Russian agent, the FBI was failing to properly minimize the identities of American citizens, with 3.1 million queries “against raw FISA-acquired information ... including section 702-acquired information” in 2017 alone.

And that was under the leadership of FBI Director Christopher Wray, who replaced James Comey in 2017 after Comey was fired by the President for lying to him about the extent of the agency’s investigation into the Russia collusion fiction.

These are the things that have shattered at least half of the country’s faith in the nation’s intelligence services and law enforcement. If you’re a Trump supporter, you probably think the system is rigged and corrupt, and you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong.

Boasberg does not say if the abuses related to the FBI’s probe into Trump, but the findings must certainly factor into the Attorney General William Barr’s ongoing review of FISA implementation. In 2016, the FISA court granted permission to the Justice Department to engage in surveillance of the Trump campaign, subsequently being renewed three times with the final authorization occurring in June 2017.

What we do know is that the investigation ultimately did not pan out when Special Counsel Mueller submitted his final report. After three years (or more) of investigating Trump it turned out there was no criminal conspiracy between Trump or his campaign and Russia to steal emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta and have them put on Wikileaks.

The Mueller report stated, “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” and “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.”

Given the breadth of the FBI’s surveillance during these years, plus the fact that the FISA court says these authorities were being abused at the same time, the question is when the agency knew that the allegations against the President were false? And when they knew, why didn’t the investigation stop right there and then?

This was an unbelievable abuse of power. The allegations against Trump were paid for by his opponent, the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, who hired Fusion GPS, who hired former British spy Christopher Steele to produce them. It was all made up, either by Steele’s sources or those who conducted opposition research, and then the allegations were fed to the FBI who elevated it through the Justice Department and brought it to the FISA court.

These abuses, if they are not overturned and lead to serious punishments for those who perpetrated them, will undoubtedly happen again. Whether the abuses occur under Section 702 of FISA or any other provision of our intelligence gathering apparatus, if these laws are so essential to national security, then they can never be allowed to be used to destroy a political party and presidency ever again. This has interfered in our political system far more than anything Russia was accused of.

Ultimately, responsibility for these FBI abuses fall at the feet of Director Wray, and it is up to Attorney General Barr to determine what Wray did to mitigate and correct them — and if he did enough. Because if he didn’t, we’re going to need some more FBI guys — a new director committed to real FISA reform and who will clean house.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

Video: Ellen's right, just because Americans don't agree on everything doesn't mean they can't be friends

 

To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39gtCWpqsfQ

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Trump should make tariffs permanent in light of faithless Chinese negotiations

Oct. 15, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to a report from Bloomberg stating that China may be already breaking the trade deal agreed to over the weekend, changing the terms and demanding removal of tariffs:

"Bloomberg is reporting that once again China is attempting to move the goal posts on a trade deal. The latest phase one deal with China would include the purchase of $40 billion to $50 billion of agriculture, a monetary accord, intellectual property provisions and opening Chinese markets to the financial services sector. Predictably, China has already begun to change the terms of the verbal agreement, according to Bloomberg, which reports it will only buy the agriculture in return for removal of tariffs. They did the same thing in May. If true, President Trump should immediately reaffirm that the existing tariffs on all Chinese goods are permanent, and suspend negotiations, with new tariffs above and beyond the current levels. Setting this permanent floor on tariffs will send a clear message to multinational Chinese exporters that need to diverse and move supply chains to the United States out of the Middle Kingdom. Any sense that exporters can wait out the Trump tariffs should be put to bed once and for all.

"China has repeatedly proven that they are neither honest nor even willing trade partners, and as a result, if the Bloomberg report is correct, their access to U.S. markets needs to be restricted until they prove otherwise."

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2019/10/trump-should-make-tariffs-permanent-in-light-of-faithless-chinese-negotiations/

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ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from the Daily Signal’s Jarrett Stepman, California’s latest blackout is self-imposed:

A new dark age as California’s blackouts are self-inflicted

By Jarrett Stepman

California, the richest state in the nation—and one that’s often portrayed as the progressive harbinger of the future for the rest of the country—has been hit with its latest Third World-style disaster.

On top of high poverty rates, skyrocketing homelessness, rising crime, and the return of medieval-sounding diseases, the state—specifically, the San Francisco Bay Area—has been hit with a mass blackout.

About 1 million people in one of the most densely populated parts of the country have had their power shut off by the utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric.

The local utility, PG&E, initiated the blackout in an effort to limit the potential for mass wildfires, which ravaged the state in 2018 and bankrupted the company. Exposed power lines and infrastructure make the likelihood of sparking fires much greater in places where there is ample dry fuel (more on that later). Still, the fires are back this year.

The blackout, which has hit cities throughout Northern California, is causing chaos: businesses have to shut down, people can’t go to work, and in some blacked-out areas, curfews have been put in place to prevent crime.

It’s a mess.

Much of the blame for the blackout has been hurled at the utility, with some even turning to vandalizing PG&E offices and shooting at its trucks. 

Though it’s easy to criticize PG&E, which hardly looks good in this whole mess, there is a lot of blame to go around—and no, it doesn’t have anything to do with “climate change.”

Poor land management has been a major contributing factor to the uptick in massive wildfires in the West and around the country. California is particularly susceptible.

Fires need heat, and they need fuel. At certain times of the year in California, the state is hot as dry winds blow in from Nevada, a combustible environment for fire. That’s hardly a new situation in the Golden State.

Unfortunately, there’s now far more fuel in our forests that has built up over decades because of a change in forest management strategy.

Former California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who now lives in Texas, has done a great job of highlighting this issue and explaining how the blackout crisis was largely caused by politicians.

Renewable energy has been prioritized over reliable infrastructure, DeVore recently wrote in The Federalist, while there has been an uptick of vulnerable power lines to connect distant wind farms to urban centers.

PG&E shifted its priority to the overpriced renewables at the behest of politicians, The Wall Street Journal explained in an article aptly titled “California’s Dark Ages,” [writing,] “For years, the utility skimped on safety upgrades and repairs while pumping billions into green energy and electric-car subsidies to please its overlords in Sacramento. Credit Suisse has estimated that long-term contracts with developers of renewables cost the utility $2.2 billion annually more than current market power rates.”

Now, in large parts of California, if you want to keep the lights on during the blackouts, you better have a flashlight or a gas lamp. Twenty-first century green dreams have led to 19th-century realities.

The Dark Ages indeed.

Permalink here.

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